Rinako Sonobe
The Choreography Around the Press

Rinako Sonobe is an architect and printmaker from Japan who came to our workshop as part of her ongoing research that delves into the specificities on printmaking spaces. She’s the recipient of a Watson Fellowship, a 15-month research grant thanks to which she is traveling with her project, which aims to question how space provokes collaboration and creativity specifically by looking at the printmaking workshop.

With her printmaking and mathematics background from Wellesley College and architectural education from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her artistic practice often goes back and forth between 2D and 3D work. 2D can be pencil/charcoal drawings to lithographs and etchings. 3D work can be a space created in a CAD software or a VR space designed to fabricated architectural models. She sees a common language between architecture and printmaking, whether it is the void in mass or the negative space on paper. After curating a print exhibition and exhibiting her work in Tokyo in 2021, she returned back to academia, finishing her honors thesis about the architecture of the printshop and how artists can unsee the familiar space and home we call “studio”. As an aspiring architect and young printmaker, she hopes to blur the boundaries of architecture.

In her own words: “I propose to explore the architectural essence of the printmaking workshop in the building and possibly the printmaking community around Buenos Aires. I believe that each printshop is unique, simply because every built environment is different and the printmakers occupying the space are at the core of what makes each printshop’s community. My goal is to find patterns and connections between the artist(s) and the space.”